Playing in the dirt!

"Are you sure Trump started this a way?"

 

My first lessons in the natural history of the Rolling Plains came bouncing around in the bed of Tandy Jackson's old pickup truck.  I couldn't have been more than three or four years old the first time he took me and my cousin, John David, out checking oil leases south of Electra, Texas.  There were two kinds of people in the oil patch of western Wichita County back then.  There were the Kadanes who owned the land and the mineral rights, and then there were the Jacksons who sucked the crude from the underground deposits.  I was neither.  Heck, I was just the city kid along for the ride.  Guess in a lot of ways, maybe I still am.

 Many empires were built by John David and I under an old mesquite tree.  Every time I'd go up to Kadane Corner for a day or two, we'd spend them digging in the dirt, grading roads, building corrals and little lean-to shacks. He had an old replica pickup truck that I would have swapped for my Roy Rodgers Ranch Set...almost.  Almost...but not hardly.  Uncle Tandy didn't much approve of our foolishness, frittering away good daylight when there were plenty of chores two boys could be tending to.

I guess after my Mamaw and Granddad Saunders, Tandy Jackson was the third old person I met.  Yes, he was hardshell baptist, too, and a deacon to boot as well.  I'll always be obliged to him for teaching me how to blend peanut butter and Karo syrup!

Is that the time?  I'd love to sit her visiting, but Annie will be wanting to come home soon, and fool that I am, I kept the Blazer!  Y'all come back when you can stay longer.